Unintended Transit
by ZRR39
Summary: Two friends on a trip to New York end up somewhere entirely different. Experiencing difficulty with accepting this new reality, but end up deciding to make the most of it with their newfound resources. But their endeavors soon put them on a collision course with those they would rather have as friends.


**FEBRUARY 7, 2017**

"Banana Twinkie!"

SMACK

"AGH! Asher! Quit it! I'm eating this now!"

"Are you going to share that?"

"Shut up, Baker."

"Perhaps I should rephrase that. You are going to share that."

"No, I'm not."

"Please?"

"No!"

While Thomas shrugged and went back to sleep, Allen opened the sweet treat and began eating it as he looked around the inside of the shuttle bus. Most of the students were asleep, those who weren't were playing on their phones, reading books, or chatting quietly with each other. This is how it had been for the last ten hours of the drive, relatively peaceful; with exception to the occasional snack projectile.

Speaking of which, Allen was half way through his treat when he heard Bakersfield's phone alarm go off. Imagine, if you would, every possible klaxon, siren, alarm, buzzer, bell, and brass instrument you have ever heard; rolled into one and cranked up to twelve. Now imagine that phone seeming to know the "best" time to go off in order to make you the most frustrated you will be that entire day.

 **That** was the sound that every intern awoke to every morning back at their dorm, and now the students just got a heaping dose of it.

"What is that!?"

"Turn it off! Turn it off!"

"It's coming from Baker!"

"Kid, you better turn that thing off or I'm pulling this bus over!"

Reacting quickly, Allen nudged Thomas with his elbow, jolting him awake. Out of reaction to the nudge combined with the sound of the alarm, Bakersfield pulled a six inch SOG Seal Pup from his pocket and held it ready in an overhand grip.

Allen put both hands defensively before pointing to the still wailing phone. When Bakersfield turned off the alarm, Allen turned to the frightened students, "it's okay guys. He didn't mean it." After addressing the group he turned back to Bakersfield to scold him with a glare.

Thomas simply looked back and forth between the phone and his fellow intern. "I have no idea why I set that."

"Suuuure," Allen drawled on.

And then Baker did what he normally did when he was bored: he sang a depressing song that annoyed everyone around him. "Gloom, despair, and agony on me~..."

"Baker!"

"...~Deep, dark depression, excessive misery!"

"Shut up Baker! Do you want me call your mother!?"

At such a threat, Bakersfield finally relented and became silent. Even at twenty one years old, the wrath of his mother still sent chills down his spine. With nothing more to do, Bakersfield sat silently only to drift back into sleep; as he often did when bored. Allen simply rolled his eyes as he stared out of the window at the setting sun.

"With that distraction out of the way," the bus driver piped up over the intercom, "I can now tell you all that we are about two hours out. If you want to get in a quick nap, now's the time."

Nearly half of the students in the bus took the driver's advice and began getting comfortable; some turning themselves in their seats while others simply put in their headphones and let their heads fall back. Allen let out a deep sigh and did the same. After some time of refreshing silence he finally began to close his eyes, finding the rest that was ever illusive to him and his colleagues. It came with being an intern at a private college.

* * *

Allen woke up and looked to his right to see a man he didn't recognize about to tap his friend on the shoulder.

"Stop," he urged the bus driver, who froze momentarily. "Don't do that. It's risky."

"Okay. Look, kid this is the final stop. You guys gotta get off so I can park the bus."

Allen blinked. The stranger was clearly wearing a bus driver's uniform but he didn't recognize his face. Instead of a slightly overweight man with a bushy beard, it was a thin middle aged man with a balding head. "I'm sorry, but who are you?"

"I'm the bus driver Smart Alec. Now wake your friend up and get off the bus. I don't have all day."

"R-right," Allen stuttered as he turned to wake up his friend, who looked back with one open eye and his right hand in his overcoat pocket, which could only mean one thing. "Dude, it's cool. We just have to get off the bus right away."

Bakersfield finally sat up and eyed the bus driver for a moment before taking his hand out of his pocket. "Krovski?"

"Yeah?"

"Where is everybody?"

Allen then looked around and realized that, indeed, the rest of the bus was empty; the students, the other chaperones, everybody. All gone.

"What the heck? Where did everyone go?"

"The last few got off at the last stop kid," the bus driver called from the front of the bus. "Now move it! I want to go home."

"Y-yeah, okay. Baker, let's go."

Bakersfield through his bag over his duffel bag over his shoulder and grabbed his laptop bag as Krovski put his things back in his bag haphazardly before grabbing his jacket, throwing it back on and quickly moving to the exit. As he stepped down onto the sidewalk, he turned back to the bus driver before he could close the door.

"Wait! This is New York City, right?"

"The Big Apple? Kid, I don't know what your deal is, but this is the Big Apricot. See ya."

The door slammed shut and the bus took off, leaving a confused pair of friends in its dust. Allen looked up and down the street craning his neck to see the tops of the extremely tall buildings all around them, some appearing tall enough to reach the stars.

 _It certainly looks like New York, but he said 'Big Apricot'. The only city in existence ever called that was–_

"Krovski, what do you make of this?"

Allen turned back to his friend, who nodded in the direction of a poster on the side of the bus stop. Walking quickly over to him, he leaned in close to get a better look. It was an artist's rendition of what he assumed was the city skyline, and streaking across the sky above it was a man silhouetted in red; but it was the wording on the poster that nearly made him gasp…

 **Welcome to Metropolis: The City of Tomorrow**

He stared and stared at it, finding it hard to think and equally difficult to breath.

 _Is… Is this some kind of joke?_

"Krovski," Bakersfield said, snapping him out of his unsettled thoughts. "This city's architecture isn't like any city I've seen."

"How can you tell?" Allen shot back, "it's night time. The whole city? Really?"

"Look around you. The cityscape is too dense to be any American city I know of, yet these structure designs are what you would only see in U.S. cities. And if you look above you, the city's above ground rail system is far to extensive to be–"

"Too many details Baker. Let's try to focus on one thing at a time. Like this."

His shaved-head companion turned back to the poster. "Yeah, I concede your point. What do you make of it?"

"I would ask if there was a Comic-Con in town, but New York City's isn't until October. And last I checked it was February." He paused to take a deep breath. "Okay Baker, let's just get our bearings, find a place to stay, cool off, and figure out what to do tomorrow."

"Alright. As soon as we find a hotel we'll pool our funds and get a room. I'll try to get a map on my phone as we go."

Taking out his phone, Thomas pulled up his GPS and waited for it to track his location. When image came up he examined it for several long moments...

"Krovski, have you ever heard of Metropolis, Delaware?"

"What? Gimme that," Allen stated, snatching the device out of Bakersfield's hand and glaring at it intently.

"Don't make me tase you..."

"I'll give it back. Give me a sec."

Using his thumb and zoomed out on the map, to get a broader view of their location. Indeed, the city they were standing in was marked as being in Delaware; the exact opposite direction of where they had intended to go: New York City. He blinked rapidly to make sure he wasn't seeing things before zooming back in on their area. He scrolled up and down the image for curiosity's sake, noticing some peculiar icons that he recognized, and pressed down on each one to reveal there respective addresses.

The first one, a simple pair of letters, "SL", was shown to be S.T.A.R. Labs.

The second one, a large and oddly shaped green letter L, came up as LexCorp.

The final symbol of interest was a golden globe rapped in a ribbon with the initials DP on it, which was revealed as the Daily Planet.

Allen started to breath heavily and his hands began to shake, so he handed Thomas back the phone. "Let's just… Let's get out of here."

"The way I see it, we have two options," Thomas began calmly. "We can try to find a hotel that's still taking in customers, or we could sleep out here on the streets… I don't much feel like having to defend myself out here tonight, so we'll try for a hotel first. Look at the bright side, if option A falls through, at least we can sleep on a bench."

"Not helping, Baker. Look, do you have any money on you? We don't want get all the way to a hotel, ask for a room, and find out we can't pay for it. It'd be a waste of everyone's time."

Without responding, Bakersfield began to walk down the sidewalk towards the nearest hotel indicated by his GPS.

"Where are you going?" Allen asked as he moved to follow. "Didn't you here me?"

At that time, Bakersfield withdrew his wallet to check the current dilemma. Allen caught up to him only as he came to a stop.

"What's up?"

"I have a debit card," Thomas said with a questioning tone in his voice.

"What? You never have any cards."

"Hence my stopping."

"What, you mean you magically have one in your wallet now?"

"I didn't put it in my wallet, but I'm fairly certain I wasn't cursed with the curse of sudden monetary gain."

"Is that even really a curse?"

"Think of the taxes."

"Ah."

Showing Allen the card, it appeared to be any normal debit card, though it had Bakersfield's name on it as well as a bank name that neither of them recognized, Boyd Banking. After looking it over, the two agreed it was in their best interest to call the number provided on the back.

After dialing the number and waited for several rings, the phone was picked up on the other end.

 _"_ _Boyd Banking, how can I help you?"_

Hesitating for a moment, Thomas finally responded. "Could I get an account balance for card number 9127-8721-8281-5864? The name on the card is Thomas A. Bakersfield."

 _"_ _I am going to need your_ _account pass phrase_ _before I can pull up your balance."_

Hesitating yet again to further examine the card and his wallet, Thomas decided to make something up when he couldn't find the pass phrase and just roll with it.

"The pass code is X-ray dash Victor ninety two…" he responded as he shrugged to Krovski.

 _"_ _Okay, let me see here._ _Your current balance is five hundred billion dollars."_

With a shocked expression Bakersfield hung up the phone and looked back to his friend. "Do you want to buy a building?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"According to this card, I just won _all_ of the lotteries."

"What? How much do you have?"

"Five hundred billion."

Allen just stared at him for several seconds, his eyes as wide as could be. "Well… Okay then..."

"Let's go find that hotel and see if this thing is even real."

Beginning on their way yet again, the two followed the GPS to the coordinates provided. At roughly the half way point, between where they began and the hotel, however, a figure suddenly lept out at them from the shadow of a nearby alley.

The individual, a scraggly young man dressed in a dirty hoodie and wearing a ball cap, likely in an attempt to conceal his face. He thrust his hand out to reveal a pocket knife that gleamed in the light of a street lamp. His hand shook nervously as he brandished the weapon in an attempt to inflict fear on his would be victims.

How sad is it that one of them happened to be Thomas Bakersfield.

"Give me your money."

A nervous expression passed briefly over Allen's face before he turned to face Bakersfield and took a step back. Thomas then stepped forward with a rather indifferent expression as he withdrew a SOG Seal Pup from his right coat pocket and a stun gun from his left.

"Boy, you really messed up this time."

The man took a surprised step back and stammered. "W-what?"

"With what I'm going to do with you, you will look back on the worst day of your life with longing," Bakersfield spoke as he took another step forward with every few words. "The devil himself will look down on you with pity and ask how such an evil could be allowed to occur. Death will offer you what will seem to be a sweet mercy. Your name will become synonymous with pain and the mere mention of you will bring a tear to the eye of every man, woman, and child on this earth."

The man began to shake as he stepped back before he dropped his knife and took of in the other direction. Turning to face over his shoulder as he ran, he shouted back. "You guys are freaks!"

Putting away his weapons a short second later, Bakersfield turned back to his friend, "I told you I could resolve things without violence."

"That was the most lethal verbal assault I have ever heard in my life, dude."

"He's still alive, isn't he?"

"Is spending the rest of your life a paranoid emotional wreck really living?"

"Emotions are overrated anyway," Thomas shrugged. "I simply showed him how much of a coward he really was."

"Well your half right," Allen sighed. "Let's just keep going."

The hotel they reached was rather immaculate for what Bakersfield was expecting. The outside sidewalk area was well lit and shielded by an overhang supported by four white columns. Walking through the revolving door revealed a rather beautiful lobby. On the one side was a sitting area with several couches, chairs, a fireplace, and a large flat screen TV. Beside that was a restaurant and on the other side a lounge area. Moving on they approached the counter, which had a tiled front and a solid granite top.

The lady behind the front desk wore a gray business dress, her brown hair done up in a bun, and a pair of gold rimmed glasses adorned her face. As they approached she took a break from typing on her computer and smiled at them.

"Welcome to the New Troy Hotel. How may I help you?"

Thomas pulled out his wallet and retrieved his card. "Ma'am, how much would your employers want for this establishment?"

Allen placed a hand on Bakersfield's shoulder. "What my friend is trying to say is, how much would a room cost?"

"That is not what I asked," Thomas retorted looking back at his friend.

"Too bad. You have no more lines in this scene." Looking to the receptionist he continued, "I sorry for my friend, he and I have had a rough day."

"That doesn't change the fact that I want to buy this placed. Name your price, but I won't go over two hundred million."

"We're not buying this place, dude."

"But-"

"No! No, just drop it."

Finally returning his attention to a rather confused receptionist, Bakersfield finally relented. "Alright. How much for room?"

"Twelve hundred sir."

A questioning look crossed over Krovski's face as the price registered in his mind. "What does that break down to per day?"

"That is per day."

"For the penthouse?"

"No sir," the desk clerk almost chuckled. "That is the price for a normal room."

The two looked at each other before glancing at the card and back again. A smile crossed Krovski's face, and a devious half grin crossed Bakersfields as their gaze returned to the clerk. Almost in unison they spoke their next words. "We'll take the penthouse."

The woman had a slightly off-guard as she held her hand out for the card. "Okay then. What's the occasion?"

"Global domination."

"Shut up, Baker."

* * *

SPLASH

Allen vigorously rubbed the hot water on his face for the umpteenth time before grabbing a towel off of the nearby rack to dab off the moisture. When he was finished, he placed it on the marble counter and wiped the condensation from the mirror with his hand. The man looking back at him had the air of being lost, sure but not sure of where he was, struggling to accept what his situation could be.

 _This can't be real. It just can't. No matter how much I want it to be._

"KROVSKI!"

Allen sighed heavily. "What is it Baker?"

"Come on out here. I want you to look at something."

"Hang on a sec."

He quickly threw a shirt on and stepped out of the bathroom into the vast and extravagant suite. On the far side, from where he was, Thomas was standing on the balcony and looking out into the city's skyline. Stepping past the large HD television, Krovski approached the gold trimmed glass railing to stand beside his friend.

"Whatcha looking at dude?"

Handing Allen his binoculars, Thomas pointed where he should look before answering.

"The Daily Planet."

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me," Allen mumbled as he looked through the binoculars.

"I know enough to know we're not in Kansas any more, Fido."

As he watched the golden globe of the Daily Planet rotate atop the building in the glow of the rooftop lighting, he felt his palms begin to sweat and his face heat up. His emotions were spiraling out of control and he felt his hands begin to shake. He then quickly pulled the binoculars away from his face and held them out for his friend to take back.

"You alright Krovski?"

"I-I don't think so man. Just take these, alright."

"Go get some sleep," Thomas retorted flatly as he took the binoculars.

"I'm serious, dude!" Allen finally exploded. "This is… so unreal, and yet it's happening… right in front of me. And I don't know what to think, or what to make of it, or anything."

"Go to bed, get some sleep, we'll figure things out with a fresh start," Thomas reiterated with a stern and serious tone.

Allen knew it was just his friend's way of keeping the situation under control. So as much as he wanted to just freak out, he thought it best to not further irritate the man in the room with a stun gun and seven, or more, knives on his person.

"Your right," he nodded, placing his hands on his hips in an attempt to steady his panicked breathing.

Thomas waited patiently for his friend to move, and after roughly half a minute, Allen began walking toward his bedroom. When he heard the door shut, he did a cursory check of the weapons on his person, taking note that all were present. Going to his own bedroom in the suite, he set his laptop up on the desk provided before rubbing his hand across the top of its lid, a force of habit to remove the dust. He then took a seat and connected to the provided internet to begin doing his own research on the situation. He took an interest in multiple news headlines and cross referenced every source he could find on them. One of particular interest to him was a recent event in the near vicinity to the hotel they were at.

 **BOYD BANKING'S BIG STRUGGLE!**

On the first of February 2017, Boyd Banking announced that they would be closing their doors at the end of this month. The reason was obvious to Bakersfield as he scanned through the article. While the small bank offered loans with relatively low interest rates, when compared to the other larger banks in the area, it was simply too small to compete in New Troy. Were it founded elsewhere, it may have succeeded, but this simply wasn't the case. This made his situation a bit more complicated than he had already suspected it to be.

 _I'll have to get in touch with the owners…_

Now that he had a plan for the next day, he was about to shut down his computer and call it a night. Glancing back to the screen, however, one final detail caught his eye.

 **Written by Lois Lane.**

 _Interesting… I wonder how Krovski would react to me buying the Daily Planet._

With that, he proceeded to shut down his laptop before getting into bed and calling it a night.

* * *

 **AUTHORS NOTE:**

 **In case you haven't guessed, this work is a self insert story being developed by the two of us, though we have elected to refrain from the use of our true identities for personal reasons.**

 **We are interested in your feedback.**

 **As a disclaimer, we claim no form of ownership over DC Comics material.**


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